Real AI businesses, real revenue, with sources.
AI Money Cases · 2026-10-20
3 cases this issue: 1 with payment-platform data on TrustMRR (VectoSolve, which turns images into vector files that Cricut, laser and embroidery machines can read, at $1,676 MRR; the founder has listed it for sale); 2 where named founders showed revenue dashboards in Starter Story video interviews, self-reported and unverified (ChartDetector AI, which reads trading charts from a photo, at about $56,000/month per the founder; and Cat on Chair, a cat Pomodoro app a designer built with ChatGPT, with sales over $18K in 30 days per the founder). Each grew through a different channel: ChartDetector almost entirely on TikTok paid ads, VectoSolve on about 1,000 format landing pages in Google search, and Cat on Chair through a RedNote beta and other people's app roundup posts on Instagram.
Business model: B2C SaaS: one free watermarked preview per day, no signup; one file for $6.99 one-time; subscriptions Starter $7.99/month ($49/year, 25 conversions/month) and Pro $14.99/month ($129/year, 100 conversions/month); a Custom plan includes API access (pricing page, 2026-10-20). Payments via Stripe (TrustMRR syncs through the Stripe API).
Business model: B2C mobile app subscription with a hard paywall and no free trial: $12.99/week or $59.99 every 6 months (July 2026 interview, 02:14); paywalls and subscriptions run on RevenueCat (11:21); almost all users come from TikTok paid ads, with about $18,000 a month spent on TikTok at the time of the interview (11:37).
Business model: Free download plus Pro: lifetime $29.99, annual $19.99, and a family share for up to 6 people; "Most of sales come from the lifetime" (July 2026 interview, 02:09-02:26); paywall and subscriptions run on RevenueCat (06:28).
Strong at long tasks and repo-wide refactors; the most frequently mentioned tool in our cases.
These are all small products built with AI, yet the money comes from very different places: ChartDetector was spending about $18,000 a month on TikTok at the time of the interview, its founder's April margin was about 25%, and he estimates revenue would be about $20-30K if ads stopped for a month; VectoSolve spends nothing on ads but first had to build a large set of landing pages and wait for Google to index them; Cat on Chair took off because other people posted about it, which its founder himself calls luck. Work out whether you can keep putting in money, content or craft, then pick the channel.
